Hi I am thinking about picking up a SSC prepped Neon was wondering on peoples thoughts about the cars both negatives and positives. It seems like one of the negatives is that they hold almost no value
The highlight of this thread will be when neonmike gets here hehe. Until then, SSC Neons are good buys if your going into road racing. If you buying one just to be a street car I really don’t see the point. But they can take the track abuse and parts aren’t super expensive. Not to mention once you learn the car you can scare the hell outta other cars with the handling. You looking into a 1st gen or 2nd gen? A local guy just picked up a 1st gen that was a SSC car, now more a ITA car. For the time being its still streetable if you don’t mind the full cage, etc.
neons own at SCCA road racing
do some research on ACR’s their fun cars
In the end, it’s still a Neon.:greddy2:
In the end you still drive rusted out mullet mobiles. Get your v8 elitist ass out of this thread.
I think habib pretty much covered it actually.
Got a link to the car you’re thinking about buying? I probably know the owner.
You’ll have to stop by speednation sometime and talk to Mike Ancas about his.
I am not into the whole blinky light type of thing
It’s bruce wapmum’s care, I plan on DD/autoxing/ tracking/ and doing some driving instruction in it.
He wanted an opinion, and he got one.
Let me elaborate;
If you’re going to try and build a nice street car, a Neon isn’t the car for you. Go for something with performance in mind when it was built. As far as SCCA road racing, Neon’s are great, but for the street, it’s laughable.
PS: What rust?
coming from a neon owner…they aren’t bad…and for what your looking at getting one for they really aren’t bad…but then again…all cars share the same thing…they break you fix it…they break again
I would rock one. Especially for the weekend autox warrior
my girlfriend has a 05 neon and will never own one again it’s got 30,xxx miles on it and it has had the control arm bushings replaced allready and 4 alignments an it’s on it 4th set of tires due to inner and outer edge wear and all the work was done at dealerships. also there is a tapping in the top half of the motor and the tranny is lagging really bad. Now before anyone says “take better care of it” all the maintanance has been performed that needs performed ie. oil changes every 3,000 miles with full synthetic and has never been “beat” and the car is still a piece of shit!!! thats my opinion to which i am intitled to and may or maynot mean shit to anyone else.
I looked over the pics he had posted on neons.org and i noted that it’s got the less desirable and harder to get into kirk style cage instead of the through-the-dash skytek ones that the challenge cars had, and it’s could use some paint and bodywork eventually. But cosmetics aside it should be a solid car for what you’d want to do with it. The '95 motor has a better intake than the later years, and they’re less fussy about emissions equipment.
There’s always stories like this one. Not really relevant to a racecar IMO. My parents have a 00 and an 02 and they haven’t had any of the problems G3ARH3AD describes. I’m not saying that there aren’t bad neons out there, there’s bad examples of every car.
a prepped neon is an excellent auto-x, they make more torque than most others in their class, which lets you pull through the corners better than say a honda that you have to rev to 8 grand to make any torque.
To put it best, someone was telling me a story from when the neons first came out and started road racing. One guy asked another how he liked racing the neon? He said “best race car I’ve ever driven”. Then he was asked how he liked it on the street. His response was “worst car I’ve ever driven”. I’ve always liked that comparison lol.
I owned a 98 Neon RT for a few months. It had almost a square bore for good torque. And it handled surprisingly well after I got use to the FWD. Those cars need an oil pan with baffles. Apparently, when you corner fast, the oil can slosh to one side and starve the engine. :doh:
No truer statement has been said.
Modern Performance sells windage trays, crank scrapers, and moroso oil pans for that reason :bigthumb:
I have a 98 single cam. The few things that i had to replace i could easily find at advanced and it was never hard on the wallet.when i bought the car it was and still is sitting on 14inch radial recaps and it handles surprisingly well.Its nothing special but other then it being really slow its not a bad car at all.